Mary Beth Barone: Galaxy Brain 2026 Movie Review
Most people recognize Mary Beth Barone from her associations with Benito Skinner, the creator/star of Overcompensating as well as Barone’s co-host on two podcasts, “Obsessed” (2021-2023) and “Ride” (2023-present).
As a stand-up, she self-released her first comedy special, Thought Provoking, on YouTube (generating 419,000+ views since March 2024) and performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. And in the past year, she used her social-media profile to help stump for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani with events such as “Politics for Hot People.”
In this hour, she jokes about how Republicans have so many bad plans, Democrats don’t seem to have a plan, and so-called moderates are merely Republicans in disguise. She jokingly urges women to woo them. “We have to radicalize these moderates!”
She claims she’d like to write sillier, lighter jokes, but her dark brain just won’t let her. And the idea of facing the comments section keeps her from wanting to share her thoughts online about Oppenheimer or Chris D’Elia, both of whom get name-dropped here. “It’s still very rare for women to get Netflix specials,” Barone says, before not only denigrating the idea of having to debase herself into sex with Netflix executives (and perhaps even Warner Bros. execs) to win professional favors, but also reminding us how the male comedians in her industry are, on the whole, horrible. “It’s narcissists with depression,” she laments, before asking them: “Do you hate yourself or not? Figure it out and let me know. … And all the comedians I loved growing up are either disgraced, or racist, or obsessed with trans people, or D) all of the above. Ever since Katy Perry went to space I have no heroes left.”
Barone finds herself needing to reflect on the state of the comedy industry, such that she’d feel compelled to find out everyone’s “body count” before getting to the rest of her jokes. Why? “I met with Netflix and they said that I have three minutes to win people over. The most amount of people that are gonna click away from the special will do so in the first three minutes.” She probably wouldn’t want those clickers to be her fans, anyhow.
